Catherine H. Morrison

Catherine graduated from Duke University in 1960, planning to earn a PhD and teach, but family needs called her home, and, for two years, she lived with her parents, and worked at the Gaston County Welfare Department. Finally able to resume her studies, she found her interests had shifted from English literature to psychology, and she entered Columbia’s acclaimed masters level social work program.

Seeking teaching hospitals, for better training, she moved to Boston and Simmons College, for her 2nd year, to do her fieldwork at Boston’s prestigious Beth Israel Hospital. After graduation, she joined the BI staff, and within a few years, she was supervising trainees and teaching a seminar. Additionally, she taught at the Boston Institute for Psychotherapies.

Catherine worked with clients in the BI’s Rape Crisis Center and wrote the introduction to “The Rape Crisis Handbook,” ed. by Sharon McCombie, and published by Plenum Books (1980). She wrote two papers with colleagues: one, “Brief Psychotherapy of the Dependent Personality: Specific Techniques,” was published in the Journal of the 9th International Congress of Psychotherapy in Oslo (June 1973) and, the other, with Kutz, Lesserman, Dorrington, Borysenko and Benson, entitled “Meditation As An Adjunct to Psychotherapy,” in “Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Medicine” (vol. 143, 1985: 209-218).

Her interest in the growth of human potential lead her past psychology and into the study of higher spiritual stages of evolution as unfolded by Vedanta and Buddhism. She read dozens of books by and about sages and realized masters and took two trips to India (1987, 1988) seeking a guru. There, she found awe-inspiring temples, refreshing meditations and satisfying conversations with fellow seekers, but no enlightenment and no guru.

Returning home, she learned that a Vedantin was scheduled to speak at MIT, and so, in June 1988, she met Swami Dayananda Saraswati whom she immediately recognized as her teacher. Since that meeting, she has spent at least two to three weeks a year at the Swami’s ashram in Saylorsburg, PA. There, in daily contact with living masters, she learned more and more deeply what enlightenment is and what a timeless journey in a pathless land may yield.